Mistake Master
Mistake Master · AP Physics 1 · Unit 3 · Step-Through Animation
Stored Energy, and Who Actually Owns It
You'll learnthat potential energy belongs to a system’s arrangement, and the zero point is your choice.
A ball on a shelf and a squeezed spring are both loaded accounts. Watch the deposits happen — one straight-line, one parabola — then move the zero point and prove nothing physical changes.
ENERGY LAB
Before you start
What you're looking at
A 2 kg ball on a 3 m shelf and a spring (k = 200 N/m) squeezed 0.5 m, each beside a dashed bar waiting to fill.
The question
How much energy does each setup store, and who exactly owns it?
Watch for
Both accounts fill in joules, but the deposit curves differ: the hoist is a straight line, the spring a parabola.
What the symbols mean
Ug is the gravitational store (ball plus Earth); Us is the spring store (spring plus block); bars read in joules.
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